‘Kurik!’ Sparhawk howled. The light seemed to fade from his eyes, and there was a deafening ringing in his ears. His sword suddenly appeared to have no weight. He cut down whatever appeared before him. At one point, he found himself chopping at the stones of the wall. It was the sparks somehow that returned him to his senses. Kurik would take him to task for damaging his sword-edge.

Somehow Talen had reached his father’s side. He knelt, struggling to turn Kurik over. And then he wailed, a cry of unspeakable loss. ‘He’s dead, Sparhawk! My father’s dead!’

The wrench of that cry nearly drove Sparhawk to his knees. He shook his head like some dumb animal. He hadn’t heard that cry. He could not have heard it. He absently killed another Zemoch. Dimly, he heard the sound of fighting behind him and knew that Tynian and Ulath were engaging the soldiers from the throne-room.

Then Talen rose, sobbing and reaching down into his boot. His long, needle-pointed dirk came out gleaming in his fist, and he advanced on Adus from the rear, his soft-shod feet making no sound. Tears streamed down the boy’s face, but his teeth were clenched with hate.

Sparhawk ran his sword through another Zemoch, even as Kalten sent another head rolling down the corridor.

Adus brained one of his own soldiers, roaring like an enraged bull.

The roar suddenly broke off. Adus gaped, his eyes bulging. His mismatched armour did not fit very well, and the back of his cuirass did not reach all the way to his hips. It was there, in that area covered only by chain-mail, that Talen had stabbed him. Chain-mail will ward off the blow of sword or axe, but it is no defence against a thrust. Talen’s dirk drove smoothly into the half-witted brute’s back just under the lower rim of the cuirass, seeking and finding Adus’s kidney. Talen jerked his dirk free and stabbed again, on the other side this time.

Adus squealed like a stuck pig in a slaughter-house. He stumbled forward, one hand clutching at the small of his back and his face suddenly dead white with pain and shock.

Talen drove his dirk into the back of the animal’s knee.

Adus stumbled a few more steps, dropping his axe and grabbing at his back with both hands. Then he fell writhing to the floor.

Sparhawk and Kalten cut down the remaining Zemoch soldiers, but Talen had already snatched up a fallen sword and, standing astride Adus’s body, he was chopping at the brute’s helmeted head. Then he reversed the sword and tried desperately to stab down through the breast-plate into Adus’s writhing body, but he did not have enough strength to make his weapon penetrate. ‘Help me!’ he cried. ‘Somebody help me!’

Sparhawk stepped to the weeping boy’s side, his own eyes also streaming tears. He dropped his sword and reached out to take the hilt of the one which Talen was trying to drive into Adus. Then he took hold of the sword’s cross-piece with his other hand. ‘You do it like this, Talen,’ he said almost clinically, as if he were merely giving instructions on the practice field.

Then, standing one on either side of the whimpering Adus, the boy and the man took hold of the sword, their hands touching on the hilt.

‘We don’t have to hurry, Sparhawk,’ Talen grated from between clenched teeth.

‘No,’ Sparhawk agreed. ‘Not really, if you don’t want to.’

Adus shrieked as they slowly pushed the sword into him. The shriek broke off as a great fountain of blood gushed from his mouth. ‘Please!’ he gurgled.

Sparhawk and Talen grimly twisted the sword.

Adus shrieked again, banging his head on the floor and beating a rapid tattoo on the flagstones with his heels. He arched his quivering body, belched forth another gusher of blood and collapsed in an inert heap.

Talen, weeping, sprawled across the body, clawing at the dead man’s staring eyes. Then Sparhawk bent, gently picked the boy up and carried him back to where Kurik lay.

Chapter 29

There was still fighting in the torchlit corridor, the clash of steel on steel, cries, shouts, groans. Sparhawk knew that he must go to the aid of his friends, but the enormity of what had just happened left him stunned, unable to move. Talen knelt beside Kurik’s lifeless body, weeping and pounding his fist on the flagstone floor.

‘I have to go,’ the big Pandion told the boy.

Talen did not answer.

‘Berit,’ Sparhawk called, ‘come here.’

The young apprentice came cautiously out of the alcove, his axe in his hands.

‘Help Talen,’ Sparhawk said. ‘Take Kurik back inside.’

Berit was staring in disbelief at Kurik.

‘Move, boy!’ Sparhawk said sharply, ‘and take care of Sephrenia.’

‘Sparhawk!’ Kalten shouted. ‘There are more of them coming!’

‘On the way!’ Sparhawk looked at Talen. ‘I have to go,’ he told the boy again.

‘Go ahead,’ Talen replied. Then he looked up, his tear-streaked face savage. ‘Kill them all, Sparhawk,’ he said fiercely. ‘Kill them all.’

Sparhawk nodded. That would help Talen a bit, he thought as he returned to retrieve his sword. Anger was a good remedy for grief. He picked up his sword and turned, feeling his own rage burning in his throat. He also pitied the Zemoch soldiers as he went to rejoin Kalten. ‘Fall back,’ he told his friend in a coldly level tone. ‘Get your breath.’

‘Is there any hope?’ Kalten asked, parrying a Zemoch spear-thrust.

‘No.’

‘I’m sorry, Sparhawk.’

It was a small group of soldiers, no doubt one of the detachments that had been trying to lure the knights into side passages. Sparhawk went towards them purposefully. It was good to be fighting. Fighting demanded every bit of a man’s attention and pushed everything else from his mind. Sparhawk moved deftly against the half-dozen Zemochs. There was a certain obscure justice working now. Kurik had taught him every move, every technical nuance he was bringing to bear, and those skills were supplemented by a towering rage over his friend’s death. In a very real sense, Kurik had made Sparhawk invincible. Even Kalten seemed shocked at his friend’s sheer savagery. It was the work of no more than a few moments to kill five of the soldiers facing him. The last turned to flee, but Sparhawk passed his sword quickly to his shield-hand, bent and picked up a Zemoch spear. ‘Take this with you,’ he called after the fleeing man. Then he made a long, practised cast. The spear took the soldier squarely between the shoulder blades.

‘Good throw,’ Kalten said.

‘Let’s go and help Tynian and Ulath.’ Sparhawk still felt a powerful need to kill people. He led his friend back towards the turn in the corridor where the Alcione Knight and his Genidian comrade were holding back the soldiers who had rushed into the maze from the throne-room in response to Adus’s bellowed command.